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The soybean is one of the most widely cultivated crops on the planet. It’s extremely cheap and hugely versatile, and is consumed in various forms by billions of people every day. This humble bean has an impressive nutritional profile, and is relied upon as a major source of protein, fibre and essential minerals across East Asia and beyond.

In the West, most of us probably eat soy more often than we realise, as it has made its way into a vast number of products as an ingredient. It’s a mainstay of vegan and vegetarian diets especially, where it forms the basis of many meat alternatives, which draw upon its ability to replicate meat’s texture, mouth feel and deep, umami savouriness.

So let’s take a closer look at some of the main uses of this wonder-bean….

Decoding Cocoa & Cacao

Cocoa and cacao are ubiquitous in any serious chef’s kitchen cupboard, and humans have been using these wonderful ingredients for many thousands of years, since the time of the Mayans and Aztecs, to make drinks, add flavour and depth to both sweet and savoury dishes, and of course as the pivotal ingredient in yummy chocolate.

Cocoa and cacao are full of flavonoids, powerful anti-inflammatory plant compounds which can protect us against chronic disease. But how are they made? Are you loco for cocoa, or do you prefer cacao, and what’s the difference, anyway? Which one is ‘raw? And what does ‘Dutch press’ mean?

Read on as we dive in and decode the data of this dreamy, delicious delight….

Make Room For Mushrooms!

Mushrooms are wonderful – they’re mysterious, exciting, prolific, and can, depending on the variety, be delicious, deadly, imposing, bizarre or beautiful. They hold the soil together while dissembling dead organisms and redistributing their nutrients. They can grow to a gargantuan size – in fact, the largest living organism in the world is a fungus called armillaria ostoyae in Oregon, which is over 2000 years old, estimated to weigh up to 35,000 tons and covers 2,200 acres! Best of all, mushrooms are superb at providing a deep, umami savouriness to your supper, and all serious chefs should always have a supply of dried mushrooms, whole or powdered, in their store cupboard.

There’s also increasing evidence mushrooms can have monumental benefits for our mental health and physical wellbeing as well as making our taste buds rejoice. The mycologist Dr. Paul Stamets believes mushrooms can save the world and advocates using medicinal mushrooms (such as our excellent Organic 7 Mushroom Blend) daily to improve our brains, mood and temperament. Here at Healthy Supplies we advocate getting hold of some of our lip-smackingly deeply-flavoured Champignon Mushroom Powder, or whipping up a big helping of Creamy Mushroom Pasta!

So let’s have a closer look at eight different mushroom varieties and how to use them….

Should we buy organic?

We all want to do better for the environment, but organic products in the supermarket often cost a sizeable amount more than their non-organic counterparts. It’s common knowledge that pesticides commonly used in commercial farming can contain some incredibly nasty chemicals that gets washed into rivers and decimates biodiversity, but some still argue that these massively boost the volume of food that one field can produce and therefore we should continue to use them.

Early in 2021, the UK government crumbled in the face of pressure from the National Farmers Union and reversed the ban on neonicotinoid pesticides, which are strongly implicated in the decimation of a huge percentage of the planet’s bees as a result of what has become known as Colony Collapse Disorder.

So should we buy organic? Every year, the Environmental Working Group publishes a ‘dirty dozen’ list of fruit & veg with the highest detected pesticide levels – we’ll have a look at five examples of different foods from this list and give you the lowdown….

What are plant polyphenols and how can they improve my health?

We all know we should eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, as they contain gut-healthy fibre and a massive array of vitamins and minerals, which keep the body’s biological processes ticking over and help our immune system fight infection and age-related decline. However, less is commonly known about the essential role played by plant polyphenols when we consume these.

There are many thousands of different types of these plant compounds, and scientific research is uncovering previously unknown health benefits of plant polyphenols all the time. So what are plant polyphenols? Well, it’s an umbrella term used to describe ‘secondary metabolites’ in our plant-based food, and includes phenolic acids, coumarins, flavonoids, stilbenes and lignans. All of these are massively beneficial to human health and can help our bodies in quite staggering ways.

So let’s take a look at six examples of plant polyphenols and see the magic they can do….

Top 10 Vegan Cooking Hacks

It can seem daunting changing to a vegan lifestyle. Whether you’re doing it for health reasons, to reduce your carbon footprint, because you no longer want a part in the cruelty inflicted on the animal kingdom by humans, or all of the above, it requires various lifestyle changes to ensure you are no longer using anything sourced from animals.

Even before you get to the kitchen, you’ll have jettisoned your leather belts and shoes, cleared the cleaning cupboard of beeswax polish and made sure there are no more fish oil capsules in the medicine cabinet. In the kitchen, for new vegans, it quickly becomes apparent just how closely intertwined animal products have become with our modern-day eating habits – there are all kinds of substances sourced from animals in everyday use. There’s isinglass, a type of gelatin made from fish bladders which is commonly used in wine production; there’s gelatin from the bones and hides of pigs and cows, which is often used in puddings, yoghurt and all kinds of confectionery, and then there’s the omnipresent red food colouring carmine, also called cochineal and known by the code E120, which is (rather gruesomely) sourced from a small insect with scales.

With so many familiar products ruled out, the vegan cook has to be canny and have a repository of new skills to navigate their eating regime. But not to worry, there are so many plant-based options that yield similar or in some cases better results than traditional cooking techniques. Whether you’ve gone vegan or would like to cook for a vegan friend or family member, here’s a top ten list of cooking hacks which have proved invaluable for animal-free eating….

Ten eco-friendly products that will change your life

Scientists tell us Earth is fast approaching a ‘tipping point’ beyond which climate change will be out of control. And yet we are still abusing the planet’s resources, spewing carbon into the atmosphere, following destructive farming practises and poisoning our water. But with some careful changes in how we act, and especially what we choose to buy, we can work together towards halting this downward spiral.

Friends Of The Earth recommends that everyone follows ‘Plastic-Free Fridays’ where we see if we can live without plastics for at least one day a week, while Greenpeace urge us to use environmentally-friendly or plastic-free cleaning products, or even make our own, using things such as Bicarbonate of Soda, Lemon Juice, boiled water and Essential Oils.

There’s an increasing number of companies and manufacturers who are sitting up and taking notice of the climate emergency, making products which help, not hinder, the progress we can make towards a greener, safer, healthier planet. Here are ten ways you can spend wisely, in ways that will make you part of the solution, not part of the problem!

How to snack better (and feel fuller for longer)

Snacking in response to hunger isn’t a bad thing – it shows we’re listening to our bodies and taking on food when it’s needed. After all, the human species evolved in places where fruit trees and other edible plants offered food throughout the day, so snacking is not only completely natural, but hardwired into us.

However, we certainly didn’t evolve with pound shops everywhere offering cheap, plentiful junk heavy on refined fats, processed sugars and empty calories but low on any real nutrition. As a result of our disordered relationship without food in the 21st Century, 3 in 10 adults in the UK is now obese (it’s 4 in 10 in the USA).

So how can we snack in a way that ‘fills the gap’ but is more advantageous to our health? What are healthy snacks? Happily, there are plenty of ways to snack which are guilt-free, nutritious and incredibly delicious, and will keep your tummy totally satisfied! Here are some of our very favourite tried-and-tested healthy snack ideas to fill you up….

Why Freeze-Dried products are amazing

Freeze-drying is a brilliant way of retaining the shape, flavour and nutrients of fresh fruit, vegetables and other food while massively prolonging the shelf life. Bacteria thrives when there’s moisture, so with the liquid removed, you can keep these products almost indefinitely.

But what is ‘freeze-dried’? Some people think the freeze-drying process is hugely complicated and involves a shedload of nasty chemicals, but this couldn’t be further from the truth! It’s completely natural, and involves freezing something inside a vacuum chamber, which reduces the air pressure hugely. When heat is let back in, the ice trapped in the products converts directly into water vapour and is siphoned off, leaving the freeze-dried goods significantly lighter in weight but looking pretty much the same.

So are there any health benefits of freeze-dried goods? The answer is a very pleasing yes! They’re almost indistinguishable from the benefits of the fresh versions. Way more nutrition is retained compared to conventional drying, which can degrade the vitamin and phenolic content of fruit and vegetables.

So let’s have a look at all the wonderful possibilities freeze-drying offers….

Ten of the best picnic recipes

Everyone loves a picnic! It gives us a chance to meet and spend time with loved ones, enjoy the outdoors and (hopefully) soak up some sunlight. But all the beneficial effects of these things are reduced if we then stuff ourselves with high-calorie, low-nutrition foods full of processed carbohydrates, bad fats and refined sugars. Healthy picnic food needn’t mean boring picnic food!

When thinking about what to take on a picnic, try to choose natural, whole food-based recipes which will mean energy is released slowly, so you don’t get a short-lived burst of energy followed by a crash in blood sugar and a slump.

We have hundreds of fantastic ideas in our Recipes section, and here are ten of our tried-and-tested favourites for taking on a picnic…